Sunday, April 12, 2009

The Season So Far

Starting pitcher
Brother Bob

All five Giants starters have had their first turn, and the picture is confusing so far. The starting rotation was supposed to be our #1 strength, but only Matt Cain had a solid outing. Lincecum was apparently over-excited by the opening day vibes and couldn't control his fastball, Johnson was mediocre, Zito was Zito, running up the white flag in the first inning before settling into some decent innings, and then there was Sanchez.Jonathan Sanchez's performance Saturday night in San Diego was pretty much a microcosm of his career. He came out dazzling, striking out 5 of the first 6 batters, no hits and no walks. You're thinking,"Wow this guy's got great stuff." Then, oh shit, he leaves a slider up and Blanco crushes it into the left field bleachers. Then he has some control problems, gets tagged again, and loses.It didn't help that the Giants couldn't do much against Peavy, one of the best pitchers on the planet.Which brings me to the other aspect of the first five games which confounds expectations. The Giants offense has been pretty productive. Going into yeterday's game 6 of the 8 starting position players were batting above .300. (Sandoval and Ishikawa both went hitlless against Peavy and dropped below.) Rowand is off to a good start, as are Winn and Molina. Mississippi Fred is doing great so far, batting .500 as of now.I'm going to assume Timmy will be better today. If the other starters follow suit (although Matty could hardly improve on his start) and the offense continues to perform well, the team should stay close to the.500 mark or better for a while.

1 comment:

Our outfielders are hitting, our infielders are not. As a team, we are 8th in the NL in OPS (.763), the Padres are 15th (.680), but they have tagged us for 13 runs while we've squeaked out 6. Time for Tim to settle matters today.

Sanchez' meltdown was frustrating--I thought we were getting the "new" Jonathan this year. Ah well, 30-something more chances to get it right!